Newt to exit race on Tuesday

Following his five-state shutout this week, Newt Gingrich will suspend his yearlong campaign for president on Tuesday, multiple sources close to the campaign confirmed.

He will return to the Washington area, where he has lived since leaving office, to make the announcement official, they said.

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Despite an acrimonious relationship during the campaign with presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, the sources close to the former House speaker said Gingrich was “very likely” to endorse Romney on Tuesday. But it remains to be seen just how hard Gingrich will campaign for him.

The delay in the dropout announcement is to allow for family and staff spread around the country to travel to Washington to participate in the announcement, a source explained.

Now, the only Republican with a serious operation left in the presidential contest is Ron Paul, though he hasn’t won any primaries or caucuses and poses no threat to Romney’s grasp on the nomination.

After suffering another round of bruising defeats on Tuesday , Gingrich hinted that he was reaching the end of a seemingly hopeless pursuit to win the GOP nomination.

“We’re going to look realistically at where we’re at,” Gingrich said at an election-night rally in North Carolina. “We are going to think carefully about how we can be the most helpful to this country.”

In his remarks Tuesday night, the former House speaker — who is deep in debt and recently radically slashed his staff — made a point of saying that he’s not hopping off the campaign trail just yet, even once again talking about the summer convention in Tampa, Fla., and promising to finish the week’s campaign schedule.

“I want to be vividly clear, we have 23 events here in North Carolina this week,” he said, in advance of that state’s May 8 primary. “We’re going to be at 23 events in North Carolina this week.”